


I Just Kissed You; Now What?

by KUG



Category: Wild Kratts
Genre: A bit of a CPS kink I think, Aviva is impatient, Biting, Confessions, F/M, Romance, Sloppy Makeouts, This Is STUPID, chris is hopeless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 01:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13493860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KUG/pseuds/KUG
Summary: Sometimes the programming in the Creature Power Suits is a little stronger in some areas than others. One thing leads to another and then to another and now Aviva is very confused....





	I Just Kissed You; Now What?

**Author's Note:**

> This is from at least August of 2017 and I'm just now posting it so there really hasn't been a lot of editing. Some parts don't really seem to blend well together either but oh well here it is! This fandom is severely lacking in the fic department (unless you're looking for Kratt//cest....) so I guess I'll be posting more of my old trash work lol  
> I hope y'all enjoy this nonetheless!

Aviva had paused on the ramp to the Tortuga, flipping through the data she’d collected on one of the large pads the crew used for medical missions. She’d also forgotten that she was standing out in the open, wearing a lioness Creature Power Suit, alone and on the relatively far edge of He Who Breaths Fire’s territory.

  
Which was why a large male lion without a pride was now stalking up the ramp towards her.

  
Her eyes widened and she fumbled, the pad slipping from her paws and sliding down the ramp under the lion’s belly. He glanced briefly at it before stalking closer. Aviva backed away up the ramp and into the garage, and she whirled, trying to hit the button to shut the doors and pull the ramp up, but the lion saw her back turned and charged closer. With a startled yell, she whipped back around and lashed out at the same time as she leaped backwards.

  
“Help!” she yelled, hoping someone else was in the Tortuga.

  
Just her luck.

  
She and the rest of the crew were monitoring a new litter of lion cubs, and a set of orphaned cheetahs nearby, and they’d all split up to do medical checks. Aviva, Chris, and Jimmy had gone to the lions, and Koki and Martin went to the cheetahs.

  
Jimmy hung back in the Createrra, holding onto supplies and fresh water for the crew, while Chris and Aviva went into the pride as lions. It had been amusing to watch Chris grovel and subordinate himself before He Who Breaths Fire, while Aviva herself basically waltzed in as a lioness and went straight to the cubs. Chris’s only saving grace was that he had activated his Creature Power Suit as a fairly young male lion, instead of a fully grown one, so after a lot of sniffing and threatening body language, He Who Breaths Fire had let him in and approach the rest of the pride.

  
Together the scanned and checked on the health of the new cubs, who were only two weeks old and still very small. Aviva laughed and mused that Martin would want to be here to name them. After a while, she decided to head back to the Tortuga by herself to put the data pad away and bring back some more food for the dinner the crew was planning on having out on the open savanna, once Martin and Koki returned.

  
And that was when this trouble had started. She’d forgotten her Creature Pod back with the pride, first of all, and now this!

  
“Oh no, why did you have to show up now!” she groaned, backing away one more step closer to the door that led upstairs.

  
This lion was a full grown one, though still young, and he was probably going to try and make Aviva the start of his own pride. The Creature Power Suits had their perks, but then there were things like this, when animals thought that she was an animal too.

  
“And what’s worse,” she muttered, “I can’t deactivate now!”

  
The lion was obviously keeping a bit of distance from her, wary of getting a face full of her claws if he tried to move too fast, but he was going to get too close and overpower her eventually, and they both knew it. Aviva’s only chance was to get to the door and shut it before she went upstairs to the main deck.

  
Eyes fixed on the male lion, she took another backwards step and felt her back hit the front of a glass case. Crap! I’m pinned! She thought frantically. The lion moved closer.  
All of a sudden there was a throaty, dangerous sound from behind her, and Aviva’s eyes darted away from the lion for a split second, just in time to see Chris making an explosive leap from the door to the upper level. He landed in front of her and positioned himself between her and the approaching lion.

  
Aviva blinked in surprise. She didn’t know Chris was in the Tortuga, and what was more, something was different about him.

  
He had reactivated somewhere between now and the last time she’d seen him, and he was sporting the full mane of an adult male lion. He was bigger too. But that wasn’t what was so different. Then Aviva realized that he was on all fours, ears pricked forward aggressively at the invading lion. He was challenging the intruder.

  
“Chris, what are you doing?” she hissed. He didn’t really know how to fight like a lion!

  
“Rescuing you,” he shot back over a bristling shoulder.

  
At that moment the invading male lion snarled and lunged forward, incensed that another male was vying for the lioness. For a moment Chris’s impressive aura was broken as he squawked in surprise and was bowled over. After a second he regained his footing again and lunged back, fur bristling.

  
Aviva could only watch in growing shock and dread as Chris and the lion both grappled for the upper hand, or paw, as it were. She gasped when she realized that their claws were out. As they crashed together and briefly rose to the hind legs, she saw a paw reach out and slice at the soft fur of Chris’s belly, and her heart jumped into her throat. It didn’t connect, but Chris lashed out on his own and smacked the lion across the ear.

  
They crashed back to the floor, and the invading lion jumped forwards first, paws swinging. Chris flinched backwards with a snarl of pain. Shaking his head, he steadied himself and braced for the next lunge of the male lion. When he lunged, Chris dropped low to the ground so the lion’s trajectory was off, and while he was unbalanced and confused, Chris shot back upwards, lion-like jaws materializing from the Creature Power Suit. They closed over the lion’s throat as Chris forced him up, over, and backwards. They hit the floor with an earthshaking thud that rattled the machinery nearby.

  
The lion snarled and thrashed but Chris hung on doggedly, using his more human forelimbs to hold back the lion’s flailing claws. Aviva could see his jaws tightening, not yet piercing through the skin beneath the furry mane, but holding so tight that the lion couldn’t move.

  
At last the lion seemed to concede defeat and stopped struggling. Chris let go and took one step backwards. He growled threateningly, saying don’t try any funny business. The lion got slowly to his feet, ears pulled back submissively as he scrambled out of the Tortuga. Chris and Aviva watched him go silently.

  
She snapped back to reality quickly and turned towards Chris, opening her mouth to ask if he was okay, but he was already standing and walking to her.

  
“Are you all right?” he asked, a concerned frown pinching his eyebrows together as he stopped next to her.

  
“Me?” she said, a bit dumbfounded, “I’m fine, but are you okay?”

  
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he grumbled, uncharacteristically brisk, “Did that rogue lion hurt you?”

  
“No, I…” She stopped, blinking.

  
Chris was leaning close, and she could see that his nose was twitching, smelling her. The lion senses from the Creature Power Suit were better than a human’s, and he was using them to check on her. But he was so close that Aviva couldn’t help but blush when his nose almost touched her neck.

  
He was moving from her shoulder down her arm when she stopped him by smooshing his face with her right hand and pushing him away.

  
“Hey, stop that!” she said, blushing hard. “I told you I’m fine! It’s you that I’m worried about! That lion scratched up your shoulder pretty bad.”

  
“Aviv—” he started, voice muffled by her paw pad on his face.

  
“No, I’m not done yet!” she cut him off. “That was so risky! You’ve never really fought like a lion before and you could have been seriously hurt!” She paused and sniffed the air, pulling in a strong iron smell. It was almost covered up by another, thicker scent, but she knew what it was. “Chris, you’re bleeding!” she exclaimed, “See what I mean? You shouldn’t just jump into something like that you could have been killed you could have—”

  
Aviva’s lecture was cut off when Chris reached up and took her hand in both of his, pulling it away from his face. Her own eyes widened as she saw that he was staring at her with a burning look. His luminous eyes flitted briefly away from hers as he raised her hand and kissed it, right where her palm would be under the suit. His lips were surprisingly soft, but the look in his eyes made the kiss seem…ardent was a good word for it, and Aviva felt her blush return in full force as she was struck dumb, all of her planned lecture vanishing from her mind.

  
Chris lowered her hand and moved closer, taking one step that brought him fully into Aviva’s space, his face almost too close to hers. Jerking out of her surprise, she lifted her other hand and pressed it hard against his chest, right below the activation button of his suit.

  
“Chris,” she said warningly, managing to keep the startled squeak out of her voice.

  
“Aviva, I…”

  
His voice jolted through her; there was a husky quality to it that she’d never heard before. Desperation and passion and fire were in that low, pleading tone and somehow it turned her limbs to jelly.

  
As though lightning had suddenly struck her, Aviva realized that some part of her had wanted something like this from him for a long time, and her arm dropped from his chest. Relaxing her other arm, she let the tension out of her shoulders. She’d find out what his burning eyes were saying.

  
With her resistance gone, her body language open and curious, Chris leaned closer. Pausing, he hovered close to her, his face only inches from hers and his eyes intent on hers. She realized that he was still waiting for some explicit agreement from her, a signal and invitation to continue.

  
Freeing her right arm from his loose hold, she put her hand hesitantly on his side, then slid it around until she could put light pressure on the small of his back, telling him that he was allowed closer.

  
He closed the space between them and his lips ghosted across her cheek until they touched the corner of her mouth, where he paused again. Aviva wasted no time in giving him permission once more, turning her own head so their lips could meet.

  
The kiss was soft and gentle, delicate as they worked through their nerves and got used to it. Aviva had to change her mind, his lips weren’t as soft as they’d seemed when pressed to her hand, and were in fact slightly chapped and rough against her mouth. But it was heavenly nonetheless, and she pressed back eagerly into the kiss.

  
Gradually the kiss melted into several and each got progressively messier and rougher. Chris’s hands moved to cradle the small of her back, and hers were on his. Aviva was breathing through her nose and her lion powers could smell Chris’s scent all around her. It flooded her senses and made her giddy with it. It was musky and full of the smells of grass and sweat and the wind, and she could have melted into the scent of him alone, even if he weren’t kissing her absolutely senseless. Not even the faint iron smell of his blood could ruin it.

  
At last they pulled apart for a moment, breathing deeply. Aviva stared into his eyes and they were burning with a brilliance that she’d never seen in them before. Face flushed, he stared back at her like she was the most interesting thing in the world and she wanted him to look at her like that forever.

  
Then he leaned forward again, brushing passionate kisses from her lips down to her jaw, where he opened his mouth enough to graze his teeth lightly against her skin. Aviva shivered deliciously and tried not to dig her claws into his back.

  
Chris kept planting more open-mouthed kisses down to her neck, and her one regret was that it wasn’t her real skin he was kissing, but part of her Creature Power Suit. She could still feel everything though, and she squeaked where his gentle playing turned into a sharper nip. The noise she made seemed to elicit a reaction from him and he growled softly and nipped her again. When her response was to tighten her grip on his back, Chris dipped his head until he could kiss her collarbone, right before it disappeared in to the bulky chest piece of the suit, and he nipped her a third time.

  
This time she gasped out, “Chris!” and clutched at his back like it was the only thing keeping he standing. She felt him growl with pleasure at the reaction.

  
She shut her eyes tightly, shivering pleasantly at the feeling of his teeth and tongue on her skin as he played with her collarbone. This was so vastly different than anything she had thought he was capable of, or expected he was willing to do, but it was so much better than anything she could imagine. Oh…. His canine teeth were much sharper than she expected but they still felt somehow gentle.

  
Chris didn’t seem like he was going to get tired of her collarbone anytime soon, but he left it abruptly, making an unexpected whine slip from her throat. He trailed back up her neck, alternately kissing and nipping until he reached her jaw, then he leaned back and looked at her again.

  
He looked so out of breath and yet so incredibly smug that Aviva wanted to both kiss and smack him. She settled for making it her turn to kiss him out of his senses, and she pushed forward so that there was virtually no space between them.

  
Then she kissed him so ferociously that he yielded to her, and she played him like a fiddle. He was putty in her hands. She teased, dominated, and played. Every time they paused to take a breath Chris looked utterly bewildered and dazzled at the same time. She loved it.

  
Aviva was just starting to wonder in one tiny, distant corner of her mind how long they’d been at this, and another, slightly less small and distant part of her mind was demanding to know when they’d move even further, when they both ruined it.

  
Getting too close had been a mistake because it had been making the deactivation buttons on their suits bump into each other, and now, as Chris finally tried to take back control and pressed back against her, he activated the button on his suit. At the same time Aviva was pushing back, not done getting him at her mercy yet, and the button on her suit clicked home as well.

  
In a quick flash of light they were back to normal, and in their surprise Chris pushed forward a bit too hard. Now that she was back to normal human strength, Aviva couldn’t keep his heavier weight up while she was startled and they toppled awkwardly to the floor.

  
Chris immediately gasped in pain and clutched at his shoulder, rolling off of Aviva and sitting hunched uncomfortably with his right arm cradled to his stomach.

  
The mood was irreparably broken.

  
Aviva sat up quickly, rubbing the back of her head almost absentmindedly as she turned towards Chris. “Chris are you all right?” she asked, “what’s wrong?”

  
He shifted towards her with a grimace. “It’s my shoulder. I guess that rogue lion got me worse than I thought.”

  
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” she demanded, a worried frown settling on her face as she leaned closer to look at the slashes on his shoulder.

  
“I, uh…I was a little, uh, distracted,” he mumbled.

  
Aviva jerked her gaze up to meet his and he only met it for a moment before looking away shyly, his face as red as a strawberry.

  
Feeling a stronger blush rise to face, she said, “Well that serves you right you dummy.” Then she gasped and darted a hand forward. “Chris!” she almost yelled, “look at this mess!” She yanked up the bottom of his shirt and pullover, ignoring his squeak of indignant embarrassment.

  
There were claw marks all over his stomach and sides, almost all of them oozing blood. None of them were as bad as the wound in his shoulder, but they weren’t kitten scratches either.

  
“We’ve got to get you patched up,” she said, alarmed.

  
Aviva jumped up and ran to the nearest first aid kit mounted onto the wall. When she turned around Chris was lying flat on the floor and her heart jumped into her throat. She darted back to him, panic preventing her from even speaking.

  
But then he opened his eyes and grinning sheepishly back up at her. “I got dizzy,” he said.

  
Aviva smacked his uninjured shoulder and he squawked in protest.

  
“Come on, sit up,” she grumbled at him, relief making her a little lightheaded herself. “I can’t tend to your wounds if you’re on the floor.”

  
He sat up carefully and braced himself with his good arm. “We’re gonna’ have to take off my Creature Power Suit vest and all if you want to get at the scratches.” He was still red-faced from embarrassment.

  
Rolling her eyes a little but still fighting down her own blush, Aviva opened the kit and then reached around Chris to find the small latches on the back of the suit. She’d designed them to be able to come off this way if need be, but the latches were a bit stiff from disuse. “How did Martin ever get these apart with his teeth?” she grunted, unhooking one of them at last.

  
Chris’s back bounced as he laughed, and then he winced. “Ow. You know my brother, he has a lot of strange talents that even he doesn’t know about.”

  
“Like unlatching Creature Power Suits with his teeth?” she giggled.

  
“I guess!”

  
The second latch came undone and Aviva sat back on her heels again. “You should probably take the gloves off, it’ll be easier to get the vest off that way.”

  
Nodding, Chris slipped off both gloves and laid them to one side before gingerly holding out his arms so that Aviva could slide the vest off. “Ow, ow, ow,” he muttered, wrapping his left hand as tightly as he dared over the wounds in his shoulder.

  
“Okay, now off with your shirt,” Aviva ordered.

  
Chris’s face had been returning to a more normal color, but now it reddened again as he obeyed her and reached up to unzip his pullover.

  
Aviva couldn’t resist teasing him. “If you keep blushing your face is going to get stuck that color.”

  
He stopped and stared at her, his eyebrows pulling down to give her a flat look.

  
She giggled. “Just take off your shirt so we can get you fixed up.”

  
Turning away, still blushing, Chris resumed unzipping his pullover and muttered something under his breath.

  
Aviva raised her eyebrow as she reached into the first aid kit. “What was that?” she asked.

  
“Nothing,” he mumbled, too quickly.

  
“It didn’t sound like nothing,” she prodded. She pulled out several rolls of bandages and a stack of gauze pads in a plastic wrapper. “Seriously what did you say?”

  
“I said it was nothing,” he shot back, still not looking at her as he tried to shimmy out of his pullover without jarring his shoulder too much.

  
“Chris,” Aviva said sternly, “Just tell me what you said!”

  
“I said ‘you just want to see me shirtless don’t you?’ okay!” he burst out, and then froze, his pullover halfway over his head.

  
Aviva stared at him for a second before she started laughing to cover up her returning embarrassment. “Why are you so flustered now?” she tittered, then wanted to kick herself for bringing up the subject of their only recently ended make-out session. She wanted to talk to him about it, but not when they were both still flustered about it and trying to fix Chris’s injuries.

  
“Uh,” he hesitated, voice cracking with nerves, head still stuck in his pullover and out of sight. “Maybe…maybe you should scan these injuries to make sure nothing’s been seriously damaged?”

  
“Good idea.” She latched frantically onto the change of subject and dug the medical tablet out of the first aid kit. By the time she’d booted it up and found the scanner application Chris had managed to take off the pullover and had his white T-shirt stuck halfway. “Um, having trouble?” Aviva asked.

  
“Kind of. I can’t get my left arm out without moving my shoulder too much.”

  
She set the scanner down to one side. “Okay then let me hold your sleeve so you can get your arm out.”

  
“Uh, sure, thanks.” With Aviva holding onto the short sleeve of his T-shirt, he pulled his left arm out and from there was able to get his shirt over his head and down off of his right arm without moving his injured shoulder more than necessary.

  
Aviva had seen the Kratt brothers in various states of undress many times—shirtless, pants-less, and both—but with the very recent development between her and Chris, she couldn’t look at his naked back without distinctly remembering his hands on her waist and his mouth on her neck. Obviously she wasn’t the only one, because when Chris blushed he blushed all over, and the back of his neck looked like he’d gotten a terrible sunburn.

  
Clearing her throat, Aviva forcefully shoved her rebellious thoughts to the back of her mind and picked up the scanner. “Let’s check out those scratches, then,” she said cheerfully.

  
Chris swiveled so that he could face her and moved his hand away from the wound, but he was still avoiding eye contact. With the scanner in hand, Aviva leaned close and winced at the sight of his torn skin. Already she could tell that he’d need stitches.

  
“Okay,” she mumbled to herself, lifting the scanner and tapping it to activate it. She stared critically at the data as it appeared and tried not to bite her tender lip.

  
At last she looked up with a small smile. “Good news, no damage to bones, no major damage to the nerves or muscle. With one or two stitches and some rest you should even heal without much of a scar.”

  
“Okay, that’s good,” Chris replied, looking up at her, “but I think you should work fast because I’m feeling pretty woozy.”

  
Aviva jumped. “Yeah, yeah.” She turned and rummaged in the kit, producing a surgical needle and thread and a tube of antiseptic. She looked around for a moment and nodded. “Why don’t you lean against the wall right there while I work. It’ll be easier for both of us.”

  
Obediently Chris scooted to the spot she’d chosen. Aviva followed, and after applying a numbing gel, she got to work.

  
As she cleaned up the blood, disinfected the wounds, and started sewing, she couldn’t help but think about what had just happened between them not five minutes ago. She didn’t feel bad about what happened, not really, but the way Chris was acting now made it seem like he was regretting his actions. It hurt, just a little…. Okay, it hurt a lot. Because the more Aviva thought about it, the more she’d realized that she’d kind of had a thing for him for a while now. Koki had even teased her about it once or twice, but she’d been so oblivious to her own feelings that she’d brushed it off.

  
And now that she knew how she felt, and after what had just happened, it stung to see that Chris might be regretting what he’d started.

  
“OW! Aviva, did you really have to pull that last knot so tight?”

  
Blinking, Aviva snapped herself out of her thoughts. She just finished stitching the slashes in his shoulder, and when she looked at it she knew she’d done a good job on it. But her last though had apparently made her a little irritated, and she must’ve been too rough, judging by Chris’s expression.

  
“Sorry,” she said.

  
“It’s okay, it doesn’t really hurt because of the numbing gel.”

  
Aviva mentally slapped herself to shake out of her muddled musings. “Well that’s good at least. And that was the hardest part. We just have to clean up and bandage everything else.”

  
Falling into silence once more, Aviva used disinfectant swabs to wipe up all the blood from his shoulder before bandaging it, and then she moved on to the smaller injuries on his torso. Almost immediately he started squirming.

  
“Hold still!” she commanded. He did for about half a second, and then when Aviva applied the swab again he wriggled almost frantically, now while muffling hysterical laughter. “Chris!”

  
“I’m so ticklish!” he protested, voice stuttering as he tried to smother his escaping giggles.

  
“If you don’t stop wiggling I’ll just let these get infected,” she grumbled.

  
“Why don’t I do it then. You can’t tickle yourself, you know.”

  
Rolling her eyes, she handed the swab over to Chris. His giggles died away and he returned to wincing and hissing at the sting of alcohol in the open scratches, but he definitely wasn’t ticklish anymore.

  
“Most of these don’t look like they’re bleeding anymore,” he said when he was finished.

  
“It looks like it, but we should still put some sterile gauze on the worse ones,” Aviva agreed. “And we’ll have to tape them in place.”

  
As she started placing the sterile pads and preparing the medical tape, she wondered if he really was regretting it, or if the mood was just so badly broken that he was embarrassed about it. Almost unconsciously, she placed the tape and flattened it to Chris’s skin with just a bit of a scraping fingernail. His skin jumped under her fingers and he made a stifled little sound that she couldn’t quite figure out. When she looked up her heart beat heavily; there was an ember of that flaming look in his eyes as he met her look far more boldly than he had since they’d stopped kissing.

  
Almost immediately, though, it snuffed out and he dropped his gaze. “I’m still ticklish, so… maybe I can tape the gauze while you hold it.”

  
“Sure,” she said, feeling the stiffness return to her voice.

  
After that they worked in silence, Aviva holding the gauze in place with minimal contact while Chris fumbled to tape it in place with one hand. It took longer than if they’d switched places, but neither of them were saying a word about it.

  
At last Chris was all tidied up, and Aviva rummaged in the medical kit to find the temporary sling that they could put his arm in. “Here,” she said brusquely, “you figure that out while I go get you a fresh shirt.”

  
She practically ran up the stairs into the main room, then stopped and leaned against the door after it shut after her, closing her eyes and biting her tender lip. She almost wanted to cry from frustration and confusion. Those moments where Chris had held her completely in his power were astounding in that he’d also been cradling her against his own body so gently, and even when he had been biting and growling, Aviva _knew_ he wasn’t going to hurt her in any way. Even when her own claws had pricked at his skin, she hadn’t been able to hurt _him_ either.

  
That Chris wanted to forget about all that made Aviva want to scream in frustration. How could he have done that to her and then ignore it?

  
Gritting her teeth, she slammed the side of a fist against the wall. It stung, but so did the angry tears burning in her eyes. Furiously she wiped them away and straightened up.

  
“Just forget it,” she hissed to herself, stomping over to one of the wall compartments where the Kratt brothers kept spare clothes and supplies. “If he wants to pretend that nothing happened then _fine_. At least for now I’ll let it go.”

  
Feeling no better despite her resolution, Aviva snatched a clean white shirt from Chris’s neatly folded stack and slammed the compartment shut. She forced herself to calm down when she to the stairs, and walked back down as normally as possible to where Chris was waiting in the garage.

  
He looked up when she stepped in and then immediately looked away again; she fought back an irritated noise and instead walked over to toss him the shirt. “Here,” she said unceremoniously, then went to clean up the mess of medical supplies.

  
He didn’t respond except to mumble a quick “thank you.”

  
By the time Aviva had cleaned up the first aid kit and put it away, Chris had managed to put on his clean white shirt and the sling, and when Aviva turned and saw him standing there awkwardly picking at a loose thread on the sling she couldn’t control the feeling of ‘wow he’s attractive’ that washed over her. His hair was tousled and face still bright, and _dang_ if the white shirt didn’t somehow highlight his slim waist and broad shoulders.

  
Irritated at her mind’s tendency to completely ignore her resolution to ignore Chris and his stupid cute face and stupid attractive body and his stupid, stupid forgetting of what had just happened between them, Aviva stomped towards the garage entrance.

  
“C’mon, let’s go back and join the others,” she muttered.

  
“Y-yeah, okay,” he stammered, and she heard him follow her.

  
Aviva took a deep breath and mentally smoothed out her thoughts. She’d be fine, once they got back to the lions and the rest of the crew, it would be easier to forget about all this. She bent down to pick up the data pad she’d dropped earlier and dusted it off.

  
As she straightened up to keep walking, the tip of her shoe caught on a tiny ridge in the Tortuga’s garage ramp and suddenly she was falling. Resigning herself to one more colossal bad thing in the line of bad things that had been happening to her, Aviva nonetheless windmilled her arms desperately to try and stop her long fall off the garage ramp.

  
Suddenly there were two strong arms grabbing her around the waist, stopping her fall. Chris used her own momentum to swing her around and flip her upright, so in a moment she was back to standing on the ramp like she hadn’t just tripped on basically nothing.

  
“Whoa, are you okay?” Chris asked.

  
His arms, injured one included, had moved after the initial grab and now Aviva was once again—for the second time in the space of a half hour—pulled almost flush against Chris’s body as he looked her over in earnest concern. For a split second she could feel herself melting into his touch.

  
Then everything crashed back over her and she stiffened. This was too much. She could deal with it if just _didn’t touch her_ but now he _was_ and he was looking at her with so much concern again that she just exploded.

  
With the speed of a striking snake, Aviva shoved Chris away from herself and rattled off a few choice phrases in Spanish. In a second she’d switched back to English because she _couldn’t_ handle this and she was going to speak her mind whether he liked it or not.

  
“How can you still act like that!?” she almost screamed, “How dare you kiss me like that and _bite_ me and act like you’re interested in me in one minute and then just brush it all off the next!? Ugh! I can’t believe you, how dare you! And now! Now you’re all holding me again and acting so concerned when you just want to pretend that none of that happened between us! Well I _can’t_ pretend it didn’t happen, because it did and I also don’t want to forget it because I like you and that’s the kind of thing that people don’t just _forget_ Christopher Kratt!” She paused for breath, panting, and glared at him.

  
He was staring at her, wide-eyed and with his dark eyebrows drawn up into a look of confusion.

  
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she snapped.

  
“I-I don’t know what you mean,” he said, sounding hurt.

  
His tone did something to reduce her anger substantially, but she continued glaring at him. “What on earth do you mean Chris?” she asked icily, “There’s nothing to be confused about. We made out on _your_ initiative, and then you regretted it so you’re pretending nothing happened.” There, it was all out in the open now, there was no backing down.

  
For a long moment Chris just looked hopelessly lost and embarrassed and then suddenly a little understanding dawned on his face. “Did you say that you…like me?” he asked timidly.

  
Like she was on a school playground, Aviva suddenly was consumed with shyness, but she was determined to bull through this mess until Chris acknowledged it or they could fix it. “I’m pretty sure I did, yeah.”

  
That timid little look on his face smoothed away and he ducked his head. “I didn’t know,” he said, “I mean, I kind of hoped you did but I didn’t want to push anything or…or make things awkward for everyone on the Tortuga, but….” His head jerked up, and he spoke up loudly, “I’m not pretending that all that didn’t just happen between us! I just…didn’t know what you thought of it and I was embarrassed. That really wasn’t _me_ at all, Aviva, you know I wouldn’t jump on you like that!”

  
Aviva blinked stupidly at him, all her frustration draining away like it had never been there in the first place.

  
“Look,” Chris said, staring her directly in the eye. “I feel…I mean I do too…I mean I like you too, uhm….” He used his good hand to scratch the back of his neck, turning as red as a chili pepper from his hairline to his chest. “I just. I would never have been so…uh blunt? So forward?”

  
Aviva was almost holding her breath, processing his words. “What are you trying to say?” she whispered.

  
“I’m saying that the…that the Creature Power Suit was making me like, I mean I was a lion, sort of, you know how it is. And, uh, I guess I felt really territorial when that male lion tried to come after you?” His voice was doing the up and down wobble that it did when he was nervous, every sentence coming to rest in almost a squeak. “Um…well I guess it was the lion instincts that are programmed in, or, or something. So I wanted to c-c-claim you, or um, oh gosh, I don’t know. Anyway, uh, that was all me, I guess, but uh, way more intense.”

  
Aviva swallowed hard. “So, you’re saying that you've been wanted to kiss me anyway, but the CPS kind of pushed you to actually do it?”

  
Chris nodded. “Y-yeah.”

  
A huge breath rushed out of her. She felt almost weak with relief and delight. “Well I thought you were regretting what just happened because you were acting so embarrassed!”

  
His eyes widened. “No, no no no! Not at all. I was just…kind of surprised at what had come over me. And I…I wasn’t sure if you liked it at all, either.”

  
“You big dummy,” she huffed, “would I have been kissing you back like crazy if I didn’t?”

  
“Prob-probably not.”

  
“You gave me multiple chances to back out, even as strange as you were acting, and I didn’t take them.”

  
“Y-you’re sure?” he asked.

  
“Absolutely.” Feeling suddenly light as a bird, Aviva bounced on her toes. Then shyness took her over again and she looked at the floor. “That was…really nice,” she said.

  
He made a little sound that was halfway between a cough and a choking noise and the stammered, “Yeah, I-I liked it too.”

  
They looked up and met each other’s eyes for a second, both flushed and timid all over again, but this time they actually held their gaze and suddenly both of them were grinning madly at one another.

  
Chris pretended to puff out his chest. “You want to try it again sometime?” he said daringly, throwing in a little wink for extra effect; the suave air he was going for was ruined by his still beet-red face.

  
Erupting into a fit of giggles, Aviva nodded. “Sure! But next time when you’re not still bleeding.”

  
Chris laughed awkwardly and seemed to remember that his shoulder was still in pain, and slipped his arm into the sling again. “Yeah, that seems like a good idea.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, we should really get back to the gang now though. They’re going to start wondering where we went.”

  
Aviva stepped back over to his side and giggled again. “Let’s let the rumors fly.”

  
“No way!” he protested. “Martin will never stop teasing me!”

  
“Okay, then we have to come up with a convincing story as to what took us so long to get you patched up then.” She grinned and looped her arm through his good one.

  
He grinned back, still with a trace of shyness, and then they started off down the ramp again. “Sounds good, but it better be _really_ convincing. You know how Koki likes to snoop.”

  
Aviva actually laughed aloud. “She certainly does! Well, we’ve got a nice long walk at least, so it’ll give us time to make up a really good story. And…maybe we can talk about…this a bit more?” She jogged their elbows together, bringing attention to the fact that they were almost holding hands.

  
Chris, who had never been bothered by her close proximity before, blushed for the hundredth time and smiled. “Sure.”

**Author's Note:**

> Oh Chris, bless your lil' heart. Someone help this man


End file.
